When Did You Last Truly Live?

If you had to live this exact life over and over, infinitely, would you want to?

If the answer is no, it means you're not truly living it right now.

Reading the book "When Nietzsche Wept" the other day, this question struck me. It wasn't the first time I'd heard it. I'd heard it before, just never loud enough.

This time it felt different — spoken by Nietzsche himself, it rang so loudly that I couldn't sleep. What does it even mean to live the same life an infinite number of times?

In that case, I'd choose only the sequences I'd want to repeat, the way you make a film: you shoot several scenes, then cut and choose what to keep in the edit.

I often see people who are sad, angry, upset with life, who see everything as a battle and believe that whoever is lucky wins, and whoever isn't loses for good.

Those same people — myself included, at times — blame others, projecting their own dissatisfactions and frustrations onto them, seemingly just waiting to punish them for the first, smallest mistake. We don't do it on purpose; something inside us is screaming so loudly that it has to express that pain, that anger somehow.

Who are you really angry at?

At the other person, for not living their life by your rules? By your mental map?

Would you live that way?

Who, in fact, is doing the screaming?

Could it be the part of you that never had the courage — or never even considered — that it could make its own choices, the ones that would truly satisfy your soul?

Or the part that HAD to do certain things just to survive, to rise above its circumstances in hope of a better future? And when will that future arrive?

In another life?

When did you last stop to ask yourself:

What do I really want to do with my life? If I had to live it again, and again, exactly like this, would I be happy?

And no, this isn't about a perfect life — it's about feeling and seeing everything that happens around you, and about loving what you live day by day. About living as if you had already chosen exactly what you are living.

Have you ever thought about how you'll look back on your life at 70?

Let's actually do it right now:

You've just turned 70, you're with your family and the people close to you, celebrating a new milestone in your life. You're happy to have made it this far and to be able to share the joy of this day with others, and you're thinking you'd like to live another 10, 20, 30 years. What would you want to do?

Your grandchildren come to wish you a happy birthday and ask you to tell them what it's been like for you so far, what the secret is to a happy life at 70, how you lived, how you loved, how you enjoyed life — because they can't wait to grow up and become adults. They think that once you're a grown-up you get to make your own choices, not what mom and dad or your teachers at school tell you to do.

What do you tell them?

How did you make your choices up to that age? What did you hold onto as important?

You can relate this to your life right now, to how you've lived it up to the present.

I did this exercise myself and realized that I stress too much over things that don't matter, and focus too much on the negative side of things, forgetting to enjoy what I already have, forgetting to be grateful for the people around me, for the sun, for the chance to experience this life at all.

With a hug,

Ralu